There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual -- only apologists for right-wing power

[marmar]

There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power
From Burke to Buckley to Patrick Deneen, we've seen a 200-year history of defending the indefensible

By MIKE LOFGREN
PUBLISHED JULY 1, 2023 12:00PM (EDT)


(Salon) In 1950, author and critic Lionel Trilling wrote:

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Three-quarters of a century later, Trilling's statement remains broadly true, as a glance at conservative books will attest. The hundreds of conservative book titles that have geysered out of Regnery, Broadside and other right-wing imprints in recent years are almost invariably distinguished by their numbing sameness: a shrill cry of victimhood, a hunt for scapegoats, a tone that alternates between hysteria and heavy sarcasm, and a recipe for salvation cribbed from Republican National Committee talking points and Heritage Foundation issue briefs. The fact that they sometimes hit the bestseller list is principally due to the well-funded conservative media-entertainment complex's bulk-purchase scam.

The vast majority of these efforts are the products of political operatives, talk-show entertainers and the ghostwriters for hack politicians eyeing a presidential run. What is chiefly distinguishable about the output of self-styled conservative intellectuals is that their academic credentials and scholarly pretensions often gain them reviews in the prestige media, presumably on the basis of their importance. This month, the New York Times reviewed "Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future," by Patrick J. Deneen, a lecturer at Notre Dame.

....(snip)....

However much modern theorists have elaborated upon the ideas inherent in conservatism during the two centuries since Maistre, they all seem to me to boil down to three simple points:

1. A desire for hierarchy and human inequality. This belief derives from the medieval religious notion of the Great Chain of Being, whereby there is a place for everybody and everybody must know his place. It justifies economic exploitation and denial of political rights. Conservative writers propagandize on its behalf with a straw-man argument: Any gain in equality costs society an equal or greater loss in freedom; egalitarianism is the mere soulless equality of the gulag, where we cannot own property and must share toothbrushes. This sentiment pops up consistently in the works of American conservative theorists, from Buckley's "Unless you have freedom to be unequal, there is no such thing as freedom," to David Brooks' hankering for rule by a wise elite. American-style laissez-faire economics and libertarianism are largely based on this idea.

2. The only acceptable society is based on Christianity. Never mind the establishment clause of the First Amendment; conservatives will forever try to smuggle in more and more official endorsement of religion until the United States is effectively a theocracy. The rationale is that some sort of divine or transcendental dispensation is the sole basis for a just temporal order. Translated into the bumper-sticker mentality of American Christian fundamentalism, that means that if people don't believe in God, there's nothing to stop them from running amok and killing people. This thesis would have been news to medieval crusaders, the Holy Inquisition, Francisco Franco's Falangists or the Russian Archbishop Kyrill, who has blessed Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting carnage.

3. We must obey tradition. For some unexplained reason, our ancestors were infinitely wiser than us, and apparently they get a vote on present affairs. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, if we're going to have democracy, let's extend it to the dead. Scratch someone who fancies himself an educated conservative and you will often find a person who reveres the past; unfortunately they leave out details like slavery, witch burning and childbed fever. Many psychologists consider this mentality to be a cognitive bias in brain function, but whatever its source, the political utility of the attitude is obvious: Utopia only exists in an ever-receding past, progress is impossible, and future generations shall profess bygone superstitions. And tradition, in this case, means the folkways of a specific, favored culture, thus denying the universality of the human spirit. The idea is well expressed by Buckley's statement that conservatives must "stand athwart history yelling 'stop.'"

One can grasp that the three precepts dovetail together in that they all rely on dogmatic assertion, denial of a scientific or empirical basis of reality and reactionary nostalgia. They are also pretty thin gruel for founding an intellectual tradition: there are simply too many departments of knowledge, for instance, much of science, that must be declared off limits to prevent them from tainting the party line. This is why conservatives habitually retreat into mysticism, gut feelings and the wisdom of our fathers when the facts are against them. It is more accurate to say that conservatism is a counter-intellectual activity that sometimes employs the trappings of intellectual discourse. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/07/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-conservative-intellectual--only-apologists-for-right-wing-power/

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. "Conservative Intellectual" is an OXYMORON..

Similar to Military Intelligence or JUMBO SHRIMP! I have not met many, if at all, "Conservative Intellectuals"

To be an intellectual, is to be educated in a broader sense of the word. A more forward thinker(Liberal). To
question and debate based on facts. To research for more information. To experience life outside one's comfort zone.

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[alterfurz]

3. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." -- Frank Wilhoit

[enigmania]

4. As a voracious reader

from quite an early age, I have detected so many glaring errors in conservative screeds (for that is what they are). Inevitably composed of logical fallacies, regressive thinking, and often featuring an excess of adjectives, I have always found them tiresome and mind-numbing. To me, they boil down to one thing, an endorsement of "punching down" without the benefit of an original thought.

[Duppers]

7. Lack of original thought. 👍

Which ranks up with their obvious incapacity for objectivity. They seem incapable of both.

[niyad]

5. KNR

[onecaliberal]

6. K&R

Two words that should never go together.